At the end of the last story, Miranda had used up all her life-energy, her Phoenix fire, in a failed attempt to force open the wormhole that could carry her back to New Eden and home. Tabatha and Elaine had sealed the wormhole against her to prevent an altered reality that had begun to unmake their entire world, though neither truly understood why Murielle and Miranda needed to remain in the past. Miranda didn't understand time-shields and, as a result, she expended all her life-force trying to reopen the shielded wormhole, and it simply sucked away all her power, causing her to starve to death in only a few days.

Murielle, having been lost to her twin until she regained her identity (after being eaten and reborn as a pterodactyl), found Miranda's dead and desiccated body a week later. She also discovered that a Praetor had been left in this time period, and it had captured Murielle's soul – her life force – and was holding her twin in stasis, when it showed Murielle how to interact with her twin's spirit by sharing their dreams.

After happily discovering her twin's spirit still existed inside the Praetor, Murielle, having learned how to recreate her own body after she had fed it to various carnivores (a sexual activity both twins had, at one time, indulged in), realized that she could create a body for her twin sister as easily as she had often recreated her own and proceeded to do so, enhancing both their bodies so they appeared more beautiful and curvy than the originals.

However, Miranda, having been betrayed more than she could endure by those whom she thought loved her, refused to come out and play, deciding to remain in the relatively safe confines of her dream world inside the Praetor. That left Murielle with two bodies to control and protect, although she soon found new ways to ease her frustration now that she had an 'extra' body to play with.

Murielle began to spend her days making love to herself, using both bodies to stimulate both of her. At night, she spent all her waking hours – sleeping hours, rather – dreaming with her 'dead' twin, sitting and talking by the lake in Lisa's Grotto.

"Hi Mira," Murielle greeted her sister and sat down beside her. She lay down on her back and motioned for her sister to join her. "I want to show you something."

Closing her eyes, she created an image of twin sisters snuggled together in a hidden cove, safe from raptors and other creatures that roamed the night.

'This could be you and me, darling sister, ' Murielle thought into Miranda's mind. 'See that sexy girl there with her arms wrapped around me and smiling in her sleep?'

Mira nodded, not really interested in her sister's obvious attempt to draw her out.

'That's the body I made for you, ' Murielle informed her. 'I created it with Phoenix fire out of my love for you – my need to have you with me. I'm keeping it alive just for you. I know you'll love it. You can see how beautiful she is – how beautiful you will be.'

"That doesn't look like me," Miranda pouted. "That's just some fantasy you created." She sat up and turned away.

"Mira," Murielle sat up. "Of course it's a fantasy. It's an idea – just a dream to keep me going until you're willing to come back to me."

"I don't want to come back – go back – to you," Miranda replied sullenly. "I don't want anything to do with anyone out there."

"Even me?" Murielle asked, hurt more than she thought those words might hurt her. When she didn't get an answer, she remained silent for the moment. It would do no good to press the issue. It would only push Miranda further away.

With a sigh, she asked Miranda's backside; "Do you mind my visits with you? These dreams?"

Miranda turned around and gazed at her sister, sitting there, acting so patient and willing to wait while at the same time she knew her sister was torn up inside. She understood that, by rejecting life, she was hurting Murielle, probably more than anyone else ever could. After all, Murielle was the only one who hadn't turned away, who hadn't abandoned her like everyone else. Of course, it was likely that no one else even knew she was still alive – the last everyone else had known, she was – One Sister: Missing and Presumed Dead.

"Poor Muri," Miranda sighed. "I know how you must feel – to create a golem to take my place so you won't feel so lonely ... And here I am, refusing to come out of ... wherever I am to join you in that horrible, beastly world out there.

"Let me make you a counter-offer," she continued, "as I find it lonely in here at times ... You release your golem to the fire and come join me – inside my dream world. In here, you can create anything you can think of: any variety of lovers, adoration and power, the infinite beauty of worlds you can only dream about out there. You offer a world full of pain and hostility, but I can offer you a world full of dreams – of everlasting love ... of my everlasting love."

Murielle felt the tears flowing down her cheeks. Her twin's offer was so tempting that it was hard to reject. Every night, she hid both her bodies so that she wouldn't have to protect them while visiting her sister in her dreams. And even with the distractions she could create with herself, her dreams were becoming more important than surviving in the reality of a world so accurately described by her dead sister.

"Mira ... this is..." Murielle didn't know how to say the words. "Your world isn't real. All you have in this place is dreams that won't ever come true. I can't promise that my world is any better – but your soul won't wither and die there, and eventually, here, it will. You will."

"The only thing I want to come true is that you stay here with me," Miranda pleaded, tears coming to her eyes. "I love you. I want you to stay with me. Don't reject me like everyone else has."

Mira, I won't turn away from you," Murielle promised. "I'll come to you every night. But I don't want to give up everything else to be with you. Eventually, I'd wither and die in here, just like you will. Is that what you want? Do you want me to die with you?"

"No! You're twisting everything around!" Miranda cried. "I love you! And you make me sound like a vile, clinging dead thing that wants to suck the life out of you! I'm not like that! You know me, Muri, I'm not like that so stop screwing with my head. Get out of here! This is my place, not yours. My dreams – so get out!"

Murielle let the tears flow down her face, unashamed of the emotions she was experiencing. "Anger is a part of life, Mira, so is grief – and love. I'm not going to abandon you. I'll be here, in your grotto tomorrow night, and every night until the world ends – or however long it takes for you to realize that life – real life – exists out there, where you can be hurt or rejected or worse. I'm going to be living that life, however bleak it may be and it will be bleak as long as you're not with me, but at least, I can have you in my dreams, here, for however long we both have."

With that, she turned and walked away. Miranda watched her sister fade, understanding that Murielle would be waking up to face another lonely day in the 'real' world. Muri had shed tears here, in this dream world – Miranda wondered if she would shed tears for her when she was awake.

Another night, another visit with her twin. Mira seemed cheerful, but determined to prove to her sister that she had made the right decision...

"So all I have to do is hold out my hand..." Miranda grinned, and held out her hand to seemingly pluck a long, lightweight saber out of thin air. "Can you do that in your world?"

Murielle replied, "Of course I can. I've learned how to make anything I want out of Phoenix fire – even fresh meat and vegetables. I could make you your favorite stew, even though the veggies don't exist in this prehistoric era."

"That's another thing," Miranda added, "I don't have to live in an age where I'm constantly on guard against giant predators that want to eat me. I can have a flying car if I want it. I can go to my favorite restaurant, watch my favorite Tri-D shows just like I could on old Earth, and..."

"Mira," Murielle sighed. "I'm tired of all this arguing. This place may seem infinite to you, but you live in a bubble. No matter how many people or places you dream up, you and I are the only real people here. Someday, this won't be enough for you..."

"Muri, you say you don't want to argue," Miranda pointed out, "but it seems to me that you just don't want to listen. You've come here dozens of times to see me, and I'm always happy to see you, but all you do is try to talk me out of ... I mean, into ... Oh, I don't know what I mean! But I live here, and you live outside. Can't you just accept that?"

Murielle sat and thought for a moment. Miranda was definitely determined to make her home in this imaginary world in which she found herself after she died. Personally, she didn't know where 'here' was. She had no idea where the Praetor that supposedly made all this possible was even located. It was required that she dream-walk in order to come here, but that didn't help her understand...

"You say you live here, as in here," Murielle began, hopefully coming up with a more effective argument as she turned her gaze to the beach, then back at her sister. "And I know you're tired of listening to me try to talk you into coming back into the real world with me. But, Mira, I ... My problem is that ... I don't ... I don't know where here is. This is just a place in my dreams where I can find you. It bothers me so much that I don't know where you are when I'm awake. In my world, you died, Miranda. You only exist in my dreams! In the daylight, when I stand and look out at the world, you ... aren't real."

The terrified look on Miranda's face made Murielle instantly regret her words, making her forget the flood of tears her words caused on her own cheeks. What she said may be true, but it would have been easier to continue as she had for the last couple of months – guiding her sister's waiting body through each day and hoping that one day Miranda would look out at her with those eyes, and talking with her for a few hours each night in her dreams, but now it may all end – depending on how Miranda reacted in the next few seconds.

What Murielle said wasn't the only thing that had suddenly terrified Miranda. The Praetor, listening and recording as was its purpose, decided to simply 'shut off' Miranda's perception of her surrounds. They were, after all, only electronic patterns that existed in the minds of the two sisters. Two or three short jolts of negative perception over the period of a single second should shake her up a bit, it evidently decided, because that's what it did, threatening Miranda's entire self-created existence.

Miranda had worried, ever since finding herself 'here', about just exactly how real everything was, as well. She was uncertain of her ability to survive beyond the limits of this – what did her sister call it? – this bubble. What would happen if she tried to rejoin Murielle and she simply faded away? She knew she was dead, after all. She had spent agonizing days slowly dying, unable to rejuvenate or regenerate, recognizing far too late that she'd spent too much energy fighting the wormhole; more energy than she had available, in fact. A 'life unit' should be able to create energy at will – that was what life force was, after all, energy created to maintain life, and that was the violation of basic physics that enabled a Phoenix to exist – but after she'd used it all, even the energy that kept her cells alive and her blood flowing through her capillaries, and she hadn't been able to create more. Instead, she had just become weaker, and weaker.

When she knew she had only a moment of life remaining, she closed her eyes and surrendered to the encompassing blackness. And when she woke up, she found herself in this amazing place where she could envision anything she desired and it would magically appear.

Murielle rushed to her sister's side as Miranda fainted. Holding her unconscious sister in her lap, she cooed and crooned silly nonsense at her, tears spilling down from her cheeks to splash and trickle down Miranda's, though a small part of her mind wondered how Miranda's world could still exist while she was so obviously unconscious.

Daylight sent dim tendrils of light into the cave where Murielle and her spare body slept. Murielle woke up from her nightmare and sat up, sobbing in grief. Her 'other' self was crying, as well, but being her 'secondary' body, it seemed to be crying while it still slept. Murielle reached over and hugged her other self, sobbing into her own shoulder. There was no one else there, and Murielle could feel the wetness of her own tears as she streaked her own shoulders. She was alone, once again.

After a while, she separated herself out and led, and followed, herself out of the cave where she'd been hiding. The sun bled brilliant whiteness across the landscape as she stepped out, then followed herself out, into the bright daylight. Color slowly returned as two pairs of eyes adjusted to the brightness, but the sun did nothing to lighten Murielle's heavy heart. Even watching her naked hips sway as she walked ahead of herself didn't do anything for her.

The Phoenix had been holed up in that cave for ... perhaps several days, perhaps even longer. She could recall waking up from talking to her sister, and the next moment she was touching herself and pretending her second body was actually Miranda. Then she'd sleep again, and Miranda was there in her mind, and they'd talk, or argue, or just sit together. In her dreams, they never touched each other for sex.

Now, out in the open, she realized she stank. She both stank. Turning to look back at her following self, she grimaced, "You need a bath." She looked at herself, hoping for a reaction that she didn't initiate, but nothing would happen unless she caused it. She hesitated to make herself reply, "Eww, so do you. You stink!" For some reason, it simply wasn't worth the effort.

She sighed and turned to lead herself up the side of the mountain (really just a big hill) to where she remembered seeing the trickle of a creek. It was fresh water, and though she now knew how to create anything she could visualize from her life essence – her Phoenix fire – she liked drinking cold, clear water that she didn't make herself. It helped her to believe there might be something in the world capable of creating something good.

Murielle couldn't imagine how Miranda could possibly cope with whatever passed for existence – living – inside the confines of her imagination. She was having enough problems living alongside the carnivores that would happily devour her along with the spare body she protected.

After a bit, she found the creek and knelt down to wash her selves off. She could easily wash every part of both her bodies, using her other's hands to reach where she couldn't easily clean by herself. It wasn't long before she was lying next to herself with her hands caressing sensitive body parts and hugging each of her selves against each other. She wished more than anything that it was Miranda she was hugging and caressing and not just herself.

The sun was low in the sky, and she still hadn't eaten. She hadn't sought out any fruit or dug up any tubers. Nothing had tried to kill her today, so there was no meat to be had. Once again, Murielle had to create sustenance from her fire for both her growling stomachs.

As she sat and chewed on something that looked like an overcooked chicken leg, Murielle realized that this life was making her more and more depressed. As she looked across the campfire, she could see in her own face the disappointment and the deep sadness she felt.

"This isn't working..." she told herself, knowing that the body she stared at wouldn't reply unless she did it herself. "But I don't know what else to do ... Miranda was always the bright one..."

As twilight approached, she heard something large moving somewhere nearby, and took both her selves back into the safety of the little cave, not wanting a confrontation that would likely leave rotting meat that would smell up her sanctuary. Spooning her bodies around so that her back and rump was snuggled against her breasts, legs and stomach, she put one arm over herself and fell asleep.